With the advent of videocassette recorders (VCRs), TV viewers are able to record TV program events that are broadcasted in a given time slot and playback the recorded program content later. During the recording, a VCR changes the electrical signals of a program's content into magnetic signals and stores the magnetic signals on magnetic tape. When playing back, the VCR changes magnetic signals into electrical signals and an attached TV set displays the program content of the signals on its screen.
VCRs are quickly being superseded by digital video recorders (DVRs) with the development of digital technology. Like a VCR, the functionality of a DVR is to record broadcasted program events for later playback. During recording, a DVR changes the electrical signals of broadcast program content into digital information, such as MPEG data streams, and stores the digital information on a memory device or directly stores pre-digitized TV signals on the memory device. When playing back, the DVR converts the digital information back to analog or digital display signals. An attached TV set or monitor displays the program content of the signals on its screen.
A traditional DVR is a single-purposed system dedicated to recording broadcast TV program content. It does not have the ability to receive multimedia content in any other manner except via terrestrial, cable, or satellite connections. What is desired is to provide a DVR with the ability to receive multimedia content via a network connection such as the Internet, giving the DVR an additional source of content. The content does not have to be received or displayed in real-time, as with broadcast TV program content. Additionally, such a system would provide a method to efficiently broadcast multimedia content to multiple DVRs across the network without overloading a content server.